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Comment by 256_ | Hacker News Reader

I'm almost surprised nobody mentioned beta 1.7.3 yet. Some people, myself included, consider it to be the last good version of the game. It came before the adventure update, beta 1.8, in 2011.

To put it simply, 1.8 is the inflection point where Minecraft stopped being a sandbox and started being, as I once saw someone call it, a "pseudo-RPG". Obviously, this view is not common (EDIT: judging by some responses, maybe it is, at least on Hacker News). If people enjoy newer versions I'm not going to stop them.

For me, though, the main disadvantage of modern Minecraft is its complexity. I enjoyed beta 1.7.3 because I had pretty much a complete encyclopedic knowledge of it. This is much harder for modern Minecraft. I get the feeling that most people don't enjoy that game for the same reasons I did.

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I've played a lot of Minecraft and I still remember beta 1.7.3 very fondly -- albeit for different reasons -- but I want to offer a differing perspective.

I have always struggled with balancing my desire to create with my capability to create, in and out of Minecraft. I would get so inspired by all the awesome things people built, that I could never graduate from my barebones cave-with-chests because my desire to make something great made any attempt feel crummy in comparison. The most I would accomplish was making redstone contraptions because -- to be a little reductionist -- those either work or they don't.

I hope you will pardon my digression, but the point I'm getting to is that in beta 1.7.3, the goals you set for yourself, and therefore the reasons for you to keep playing, were largely creative in nature, like building a cool house. Updates past this point gave players the opportunity to make simpler, game-directed goals. It used to be that you reach resource satiation quickly, but now it will take hours to obtain a fully enchanted set of diamond armor, kill the ender dragon, explore all the new generated structures, etc. In later years they've codified these goals in achievements, including crazy ones like getting every positive and negative effect at the same time or exploring every biome. With these updates, the people who enjoy building cool things also got more cool things to build with, but this has in my opinion been a little more secondary.

I understand why people might be disappointed, or at least confused, by Minecraft's updates now pushing it toward "pesudo-RPG" status, but I have at least welcomed these changes because they gave me and my friends a reason to reboot our server every few years to try out the new stuff.

Although I will add that if your gripe is regarding combat/pvp changes (e.g. shields) then yeah I have nothing to add to that discussion.

EDIT: I also agree with sibling comments about more content = more enjoyment, at least for me. I enjoy playing games where there are just a lot of things to learn and know.

Well put.

> It used to be that you reach resource satiation quickly, but now it will take hours to [do so...]

I think this may actually be the most important point. It is also not true, but also is at the same time, I feel.

If "resource satiation" refers to the ability of the player to build/do whatever they want, then it is true. If "resource satiation" means "having enough resources", then for some people it is impossible by nature. There's always a temptation to do more and build more.

For me, I think this temptation was independent of the game itself. Looking back at my childhood, I don't feel like there was any sharp distinction between my creations in Minecraft and any of my other creative pursuits, including programming; it all sort of blended together. The game was less a game, more like yet another creative medium.

> If "resource satiation" refers to the ability of the player to build/do whatever they want, then it is true. If "resource satiation" means "having enough resources", then for some people it is impossible by nature. There's always a temptation to do more and build more.

Just to clarify my point, when I refer to satiation I mean it in the same way one might feel about MMOs. OK, let me be honest here, I don't play any MMOs but my understanding is that after you "beat" the game and max your level, one thing that might bring you back outside of new content is obtaining all the best gear, different skins, whatever you might want to collect. In the same vein, in Minecraft you could imagine wanting to obtain the best armor, weapons, food, etc. In some of the servers I played on, there were players who lived in a ramshackle hut and spent most of their time mining to get enough diamonds for gear -- and after a certain point they ran out of things to improve upon for their player character so they started looking for rare items in dungeons (remember when mossy cobble was a rare item?). At some point, they had gotten enough, and saw no further reason to keep playing. An extreme case, but not completely dissimilar to my own.

I don't remember the specific version (s) I played. I remember being kinda depressed and burned out.

Although I didn't discover them, water ladders and cart boosters were so much fun. That feeling of almost cheating, using the bugs in the system to do magic things was so much fun.

I'd definitely credit Minecraft for rekindling some love for hacking, in the classic, non crack sense, but, matrix like, bending the rules to do NEAT stuff.

Then mods, pipes and auto crafting, bigger stuff.

I remember when tool damage was introduced. I was annoyed, but it was ok. I think around the time of food/hunger it started losing its luster. grow potatoes or butcher cows and pigs. it was ok. But that's the time I started drifting away.

Just an amazing game that brought me joy. good stuff.

I agree, it's crazy to think how much content has been added to the game since beta 1.7.3 because I remember thinking at that time that there already was so much. Like you imply, there were all sorts of unintentional tricks to add to your bag: cart boosters, all manner of BUDs, placing a water source beneath your feet to prevent fall damage. But I think part of that feeling of wonder is nostalgia, since playing now I am not really bothered by powered rails, observers, and feather falling -- nor do I think I would be if they had been introduced from the get-go.

And of course redstone. What a lovely idea in retrospect.

Thank you for helping me revisit these memories.

Have you tried Better than Adventure[0]? It's a fork of Beta 1.7.3 for exactly this reason!

[0] https://www.betterthanadventure.net/

Thank you for sharing, all this talk of beta 1.7.3 (which is over 10 years old, my goodness how time flies) has made me nostalgic to try it, and this might be what convinces me to, since without anything new I probably would set up in a cave and then quickly quit.

For people that would prefer the vanilla experience, I recommend the Betacraft client. I have been using for some time since I had some issues with sound being missing when playing older versions on the official client.

[0] https://betacraft.uk/

I think Minetest is in a similar vein, and for similar reasons. And it's F/LOSS.

The thing is, you don't have to play the rpg aspect of it at all. You can still play the same game you played in beta 1.7.3 and get benefits like more variety of blocks for building and better automated farm setups leveraging the newer items like unmeltable ice. No one is forcing you to slay the end dragon.

For real, I play this game for hundreds of hours and not even bother to beat end dragon in vanilla survival even once. I mostly play around redstones/command blocks/mods. The game don't really force you to play survival mode at all. No "unlock creative mode after beat this game" sh*t exists in this game. If you really don't like it, just ignore this part as a whole.

  And Metallica ended at kill'em all

Tbh everyone has some favourite version and un-favourite changes. But the game evolves and you can still play old and new simultaneously

See, I was very much the opposite. Even after Minecraft's full release I was huge into the mods because I never felt like the vanilla Minecraft experience had enough content.

I'm the other way. I hosted a cracked 1.5.2b server for 4 years and it has a block shaped place in my soul.

Hmm. I wonder if this is the distinction between people who prefer old Minecraft and new Minecraft.

How do you feel about modern Minecraft?

> I wonder if this is the distinction between people who prefer old Minecraft and new Minecraft.

I'm old. But to be fair, I got into Minecraft by helping my kid set up a server - and then he moved on and it became my server. At least it wasn't a puppy.

I honestly haven't had much time for Minecraft in the last 5+ years, but when I have it's mostly been with old versions and mods I liked back in the old days. I doubt that's because I wouldn't like the modern game so much as that when I turn to Minecraft it's for the nostalgia.

Unmodded Minecraft has been steadily getting worse and worse.

Mods had a peak at 1.7.10, then Mojang effed it all up but the community seems to be getting really impressive lately, especially with Distant Horizons.

I liked the simplicity of 1.7.3 beta, but the addition of hunger made pvp more interesting. Enchantments also made XP farming a thing, which brought in creativity. Mobs got needed buffs so caving was actually a challenge. Overall I liked most of the changes until MSFT bought it and did the bad combat update, which online arcade modes rejected. They just could've done without The End.

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